River Cottage Veg Chili and Fat Free Pineapple Coffee Cake

I opened up RIVER COTTAGE VEG today and picked out the chili recipe because I had similar ingredients and it sounded like it would be good with baked potatoes and corn tortillas. Mmmm! The recipe calls for pinto beans and zucchini which I substituted kidney beans and carrot. It came out delicious. First time I've ever added red wine to chili. I added a bit of chili powder because I felt like it needed it.

And because I can't live without cake, I made a fat free cake which I got from The Fat Free Vegan blog. I've been making so much cake for the past few weeks/months that my dresses are fitting kind of tight lately! I've made this recipe probably 8 years ago when I first went vegan. It uses pineapple and apple sauce for the fat and has much less sugar than a normal cake. It was good then and it's good now. It's got a 'chewier' consistency than normal cake (probably because I used tapioca flour for the egg replacer) but it is a nice sweet treat without the guilt!

Potato Boats.

So I had a big bag of potatoes that needed to be used up. I scanned through all my cookbooks but nothing was calling my name so I went online. And I found this. I changed them up a little which is why I called them "boats" rather than "skins". They are kind of a cross between a potato skin and a stuffed baked potato. I first "baked" the potatoes in the microwave then I scooped out the flesh. I followed the instructions to bake the skins first after brushing them with a oil/spice mixture. I used the potato flesh for the filling by mashing them with Earth Balance, Vegenaise, Tofutti Cream Cheese, garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley and all purpose seasoning. I brushed the tops with olive oil and sprinkled a bit of imitation bacon bits before baking. They were sooooooooo yummy. They were crispy on the outside with fluffy insides. They reminded me of these frozen potato boats that my parents used to buy for us from the store. Can't wait to make these again.